Sale of federal lands needs environmental review; Federal judge slows Trump administration's efforts to open lands

摘要

A FEDERAL judge in Montana ruled that the Trump administration must complete an environmental analysis to support its decision to lift an Obama-era moratorium on coal leasing on public lands, dealing a major blow to the Trump administration's efforts to open federal lands to development. In his ruling, Judge Brian Morris for the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana stopped short of requiring the broad programmatic environmental impact statement that Obama Interior Secretary Sally Jewell had begun, but he ordered Trump officials to initiate some level of National Environmental Policy Act review.